What The Speaker Didn't Say
by B. L. Powell
Summary: This was originally on reddit and the Bungie forums. My way of filling in one of the first plot holes from the original game.


"I could tell you of the great battle, centuries ago… how the Traveler was crippled. I could tell you of the power of the Darkness, its ancient enemy. There are many tales, told throughout the City to frighten children. Lately those tales have stopped. Now… the children are frightened anyway." "The Darkness is coming back. We will not survive it this time."

"Its armies surround us. The Fallen are just the beginning."

"What can I do?"

"You must push back the Darkness. Guardians are fighting on Earth and beyond… join them. Your Ghost will guide you. I only hope he chose wisely."

The Speaker heard the pair leave, but he didn't watch. Instead, he climbed the stairs, lost to his own thoughts. Meanwhile, the Entangled Particle Relay continued its relentless dance. Semicircle beams of relic iron lined with hadronic disperses spun in infinite loops, one inside the other to give the illusion of spheres contained within one another. His mind spun too, listlessly and unintelligibly as the EPR. Reaching the top of the stairs, he looked over his corner of the world. Remove the Golden Age technology and all he had was a table, a chair, shelves, books, and paper.

He sat at the table, straight and regal, appearing everything expected of his station. Lingering light from the sunset reflected off his mask as he said softly, "Ghost?"

There was a small flash of light as the Speaker's Ghost materialized in front of its companion. The gray, floating miracle stared momentarily with its blue eye. For the shortest time, it seemed to be a diamond shape, but, as with any processing Ghost, its back and front halves began turning independently of one another, giving the impression that the Ghost was going from diamond to star and back again. A soft, feminine voice issued from the machine along with the whir and click of the uncountable parts inside of it, "Speaker?"

"Please seal the observatory for the evening."

"Right away, Speaker." The Ghost flew down the stairs to an access panel underneath the Speaker's work station. A brilliant blue light shot from the Ghost and struck the panel, connecting it directly to the panel's electronics via a constant stream of electrons. Within seconds, the walls of the building began to shift, spreading out to close in the two from the rest of the Tower. As the Ghost flew back up the stairs, it added with the slightest hint of derisiveness, "The children are frightened anyway, hm?"

The blank mask of the Speaker turned to stare at the machine. "Do not start with me tonight, Ghost." He reached his hands up under the hood he always wore, unlatching the clips that held his mask in place.

"Why not? There isn't anything special about tonight; you've nothing to do except stare at the recent reports from the EPR." It flitted back and forth around the Speaker and his desk, watching him.

"Because there is nothing to discuss." He pulled off that heavy mask, revealing a face that hadn't been seen by anyone but his Ghost since he was first resurrected by the Light. Even though the building was now hermetically sealed, he could swear he felt a faint breeze across his face and with that breeze he couldn't help but let his mind slip into memories and longings. There was a time before the Collapse; he was there. There had been prosperity and life and wonder and power and… he had died in a car crash. No matter the life expectancy of any race, no one even during the Golden Age survived a freak decapitation.

And yet, here he was, resurrected by the Traveler, by the Light like thousands of Guardians before and thousands since. All of them were warriors. Not him, no, he still remembered the Ghost's reasoning: __Your ears have always been open and your tongue waiting to speak. Now, it will wait no more.__ He was currently failing at his supposed first gift. His companion's voice had drifted into his senses, so he replied, "I apologize, but say that again."

The Ghost angled down some so that part of its blue eye would be obscured. It hoped to reflect the emotion of annoyance as well as it could vocalize. "You told that guardian nothing! You didn't answer a single of her questions and yet you expect her to rush off and die for the Tower! No history lesson, no exposition, no explanation, just 'The Darkness is coming back."

The Speaker sat his mask of the desk and leaned his head back to stare at the ceiling, allowing a moment of reprieve from his constant aura of vigilance. "If she is so curious, she can ask her Ghost and access its Grimoire to learn what she needs. Beyond that, I hear her Vanguard already made contact. She will be fine."

There was a long pause filled only with the ever-spinning motion of the EPR in the background of the conversation. The Ghost finally replied, "You didn't even bother asking her name, did you?"

A sigh escaped his lips and he asked, "Do you know how many hundreds… thousands of guardians I have directed to battle back against the Darkness?" There was a whir as the Ghost prepared to respond, but he interrupted, "No, I do not need to hear the full number."

The Ghost flew above its companion, blocking his vision of the ceiling and looking him directly in the eye. "There was a time when you cherished every Light-born that walked through those doors; you used to walk with them through the Tower, showing all the splendor that still existed even after the Collapse."

"And I have been here for almost a century now." The Speaker flicked his wrist at the machine, shooing it away as he sat up and gazed at the EPR. He continued as if he were talking to himself, "A century of staring at this machine, waiting for nine particles buried deep in our broken salvation to turn, watching their entangled particles spin these beams, and watching the hadronic hologram flicker every day." He peered into the faintly glowing, green sphere at the center of the massive device. "A nanometer's change could warn us of a Fallen attack, could tell us how to restart the Golden Age, could tell me all the ways I've misheard the Traveler."

"I have taken volumes of notes trying to decipher the Traveler. I have stained countless gloves with ink trying to condense a medium of information that contains a few googolplexes of possible iterations down to a legible two dimensional representation." With a brief pause, the Speaker picked up one of numerous pieces of parchment that were scattered across his desk and the floor. He stared at the colored sphere with intersecting lines, reading vague themes like reading a poem in a foreign language. He tossed the paper aside, letting it drift down and join its brethren on the floor as he continued, "I have held microcosms of the Darkness, stared into them, and have been duly judged in the same manner by our enemy."

The Ghost hovered down to just above the desk's surface to look up at his face, trying to seem sympathetic as it said, "But the guardians-"

"The guardians have been dying the whole time!" His shout echoed through the massive room, once, twice, thrice back to them. Each time his voice sounded weaker, closer to how tired he truly felt. "I sit in this room, this cell, every day and night. Meals are brought to me; I no longer sleep; I take three walks along the Tower a day. Beyond that, I listen to the Traveler, I attempt to give discernable directions, guardians come, and guardians die… yet you expect me to learn each of their names?"

"Wouldn't it be a way to honor each of their deaths?" The Ghost's voice seemed softer and hesitant, looking down now.

The Speaker's voice calmed again and he lifted his mask back up from the desk as he replied, "To what end? Each was already dead. Each was lifted from the grave, pointed in my direction, and told to walk. I then point each in the direction of the enemy and tell them to kill." He placed that mask back on his face and felt its security and its strength. It was the power of anonymity and of false, rumored power that straightened his back and held his head higher. He slid his chair over to stare into a circle of relic iron built with sliders and extensions to cover what the viewer sees; it was the Traveler-made compatriot of the EPR, a measuring device, the Viewer. As he peered through to focus on the hadron particles coalescing in the Traveler's endless song, he felt his only self-admitted gift return; he felt his walls strengthen again.

"I point them and tell them to kill just like a gun in the hands of a guardian. Do you think any Titan has ever stopped to tell his auto rifle why it was shooting the life form in front of it? No, it would be meaningless for the gun and, in short time, the gun will be replaced. Ghost, they are more weapons than soldiers; they see others like them performing the same action as they have been instructed, so they follow. They fight because they know nothing else." He looked down to grab a pen and start sketching the form playing before his eyes. As he worked diligently, he added, "No one asks a gun what its name is; no one names a gun."

There was a long silence between them as the Speaker continued to work. The EPR continued its spinning and the Ghost whirred, flittering here and there, trying to get a good view of the paper. Meanwhile, he continued to work while staring into the green glow. Sol fell from the sky and Luna, scarred and infested, limped into its celestial place. Finally, he set his pen down to look at his finalized work, but the Ghost saw its chance, "Cayde-6 names his guns."

The Speaker's impassive mask turned to stare at the little machine; he avoided his own reactions though and replied, "Speaking of the Vanguard, unseal the room and call for them. If this is right, something has attracted the Fallen's attention to the Skywatch in Old Russia." The two stared at one another for another moment before the Ghost wordlessly flew away to follow the orders given to it.


End file.
